Canon EOS 7D Mark II Review

The Canon EOS 7D Mark II ($1,799, body only) is the long-awaited successor to the company's flagship APS-C D-SLR, the 7D ($749.00 at Amazon) . The 20-megapixel camera may bear the same moniker, but the Mark II is completely revamped. Its 65-point autofocus system runs circles around the 19-point system used by the original 7D, and on-sensor phase detection vastly improves autofocus speed when recording video. There are some drawbacks; it doesn't have an articulating rear display or integrated Wi-Fi like the less expensive Sony Alpha 77 II ( at Amazon) . But the 7D Mark II is a killer SLR that action shooters and videographers should take a close look at, and it earns Editors' Choice honors in the high-end APS-C D-SLR category.

Design and Features
The 7D Mark II ($1,499.00 at Dell)  is as big as some smaller full-frame bodies, measuring 4.4 by 5.9 by 3.1 inches (HWD), and its 2-pound weight is heavy in the hand. Its dense body features magnesium alloy construction, its 1/8,000-second shutter is rated to 200,000 cycles, and the body is sealed to protect it from dust and water. We weren't able to take our 7D test unit apart, but a teardown by the folks at Lensrentals shows just how extensive the camera's weather-sealing is. The result is an extremely durable body that feels a lot more solid than the company's entry-level full-frame offering, the EOS 6D ($1,699.00 at Amazon) (4.4 by 5.7 by 2.8 inches, 1.7 pounds).

There are some design choices that had to be made to achieve the durability the 7D Mark II promises to deliver. The rear LCD is a fixed panel, which isn't quite as useful for video as the vari-angle display that Canon uses in the midrange 70D ($1,199.00 at Amazon) , and the magnesium alloy chassis means that there's no built-in Wi-Fi, as an all-metal build interferes with wireless data transmission. That didn't stop Canon from including a GPS module, which adds location data to images when enabled; Sony went the opposite route with its Alpha 77 II, omitting a GPS and including Wi-Fi, as well as a hinge-mounted display.

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Canon doesn't include a lot of controls on the face of the camera, just the depth-of-field preview button and a button that raises the built-in pop-up flash. The former can be reprogrammed for other functions via the camera menu, so you can use it to halt the AF system (useful if you know that you're locked onto your target), lock exposure, or perform a few other sundry functions. When held down, the flash release allows you to configure the functionality of the built-in pop-up flash. It can set for E-TTL II, manual, or strobe output, and you can set it to be a commander for external Speedlites and also set whether it should fire in 1^st Curtain or 2^nd Curtain mode. The 7D can sync with a strobe at exposures as short as 1/250-second.

There's a standard mode dial on the top plate, to the left of the viewfinder. It's a locking dial, so you have to hold a center button down while you turn it to change the shooting mode. The 7D does have a fully automatic setting and the standard P, Av, Tv, and M settings, as well as Bulb exposure and three custom setting banks. The power switch is located right next to the dial.

The right side of the top plate houses the monochrome information display, plus buttons to control its backlight, adjust the flash exposure compensation and ISO, set the drive mode and AF mode, and change the white balance and metering pattern. There's also a command dial, the M-Fn button, and the shutter release. The rear houses a Live View button with a toggle switch for video and still capture, the AF-ON, Exposure Lock, and AF Point Selection buttons, a flat command dial with a center Set button, and Canon's Q button, which launches a rear information display from which many shooting settings can be adjusted. Image playback and delete controls run along the left side of the rear LCD.

The 7D Mark II uses a newly design lever system to change its focus mode. By default you'll first have to hit the AF Point Select button to enable the lever's functionality, but it can be set to work directly without an additional button press via the menu. Each pull of the lever changes the focus pattern. If you're using a focus pattern that allows you to move the active focus point, the joypad at the center of the lever controls that. Like the lever itself, it requires you to first hit the AF Point Select button to adjust, but it too can be set for direct control via the camera menu.

The menu system is vast, and there are a lot of features available there that might not be apparent at first glance. The 7D supports interval shooting, so you can capture images in succession and later convert them into time lapses. You can set a specific number of shots between 1 and 99, or set the camera to shoot until its battery or memory is exhausted. The maximum interval is just under 100 hours, and is adjustable in 1-second increments. In-camera HDR and multiple exposure capture are also supported.

As you'd expect from an SLR that's positioned at the top of its class, the 7D Mark II features a big, bright optical viewfinder with 100 percent frame coverage. A black outline shows the area covered by the 7D's autofocus system that lights up in red when the focus system is engaged. The active focus point is also displayed in the OVF, as is a digital level (at the top of the frame), and icons that let you know when the autofocus system is engaged and when you're shooting under flickering lights. Shooting information is displayed via a green LCD that runs across the bottom and along the right side of the finder; it's serviceable, but not quite as crisp or as clean to the eye as the blue LEDs Nikon has been using in its recent cameras, including the D7100 ($574.95 at Amazon) .

The 3-inch rear display is very sharp thanks to a 1,040k-dot resolution. It's fixed, just like the similar 3.2-inch 1,037k-dot display used by the Pentax K-3 ($1,085.95 at Adorama) . Canon doesn't advertise the 7D's LCD as having a gapless design that leaves no space between the LCD panel and its protective cover like Pentax does with the K-3, but a side-by-side comparison shows that there's not really a practical difference between the two displays.

Performance and Conclusions

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In very low light the 7D slows to about 0.8-second, regardless of whether you are using the optical finder or rear LCD, to acquire focus and fire a shot. That's really quick; the Sony Alpha 77 II required about 1.4-second to do the same when shooting our low light test target. In bright light the Alpha 77 II is very quick to lock focus, but that's not the biggest difference between it and the 7D Mark II. The Alpha 77 II uses an electronic viewfinder, so there's no need to tap a button to enable Live View. It's got an eye sensor, so you can switch between using the rear LCD and the eye-level EVF simply by raising the camera to your eye.

The 7D's focus system features 65 AF points, all of which are cross-type. The focus system can be set to choose a point or points automatically from the entirety of its area, do the same from one of three zones (left, center, and right), or you can select from a point or group of points. Groups can be as small as five points and as large as fifteen. When set to direct control, it's very quick to change between focus modes and move the active point around. And, unlike less expensive cameras, the 65 points cover most of the frame. There's a small strip at the left and right of the frame not covered by the AF sensor, as well as a larger area at the top and bottom.

Just like the company's full-frame flagship camera, the EOS-1D X , the 7D Mark II features an autofocus system that you can adjust to your heart's content. It's got six main modes to choose from, each corresponding to a different type of scene. The default, Case 1, is a general setting that is balanced to capture many types of scenes, but you can switch to Case 2 to prioritize tracking a single object, Case 3 to look for subjects that have just entered the frame, Case 4 to shoot subjects that accelerate and decelerate, Case 5 for subjects that move erratically, and Case 6 for subjects that both change speed and direction without warning.

Additionally, each Case has customizable Tracking Sensitivity, Acceleration/Deceleration Tracking, and Autofocus Point Auto Switching; those settings can be set to five levels, ranging from -2 to +2, so you can really tweak the system to handle the type of action you're shooting. You won't find this type of customizability in other cameras in this class.

It's that autofocus system that makes the 7D Mark II an appealing camera for photographers who specialize in sports and nature. Neither is my personal forte, but I did take it out to the zoo and spent some time photographing quick moving parakeets in an indoor aviary. I used Case 6 to track the birds, which were flying about without warning. The 7D did a bang-up job keeping them in in focus, and it was only limited by my skills as an action shooter and the lack of critical sharpness delivered by the only telezoom lens I had on hand at the time, the EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM ($1,099.95 at Amazon) .

It's easy to rattle off shots in quick succession—Canon rates the 7D at 10fps, and it just about lives up to that claim, hitting 9.8fps over full bursts of shots in lab tests, even with AI Servo continuous focus enabled. For our tests, we made sure that the camera's Anti-Flicker mode, which is designed to change the burst rate to avoid changes in exposure when shooting under the lighting that's often found in sports arenas, was disabled in order to ensure that the burst rate was as steady as the camera could manage.

Depending on the format you're shooting, the number of images you can capture in a burst varies. If you set the camera to Raw+JPG, it manages 18 shots before slowing down; it can keep shooting at a slower pace, but if you want to clear all of those images to a memory card and start with a fresh buffer, only about 7.6 seconds is required.

If you use Raw mode, the buffer holds about 26 shots before the 7D slows, with a short 6.4-seconds required to clear all of those images to a Toshiba 120MBps CompactFlash card. But if you opt to shoot JPG, you can shoot for an incredible duration. I held the shutter button down for a full two minutes, capturing more than 1,200 full-resolution JPGs with no signs of the 7D slowing down. That's pretty amazing. The Alpha 77 II, which is a bit faster at 12fps with focused locked and manages 9.3fps with tracking enabled, matches the 7D when shooting Raw images, but it can only capture 54 JPG shots before slowing down.

I used Imatest to check and see how the 7D Mark II's image quality holds up at higher ISOs. When shooting JPGs at default noise reduction settings the camera keeps noise under 1.5 percent through ISO 3200. I examined images from the 7D Mark II on a calibrated NEC MultiSync PA271W($999.00 at Amazon) display. There is some minor smudging of details at ISO 3200, but images are very crisp at ISO 1600 and below. Noise increases to 1.8 percent at ISO 6400, and photos look just a tad bit blurrier than they do at ISO 3200, but they're still quite useable. Detail drops off further at ISO 12800 and the top standard setting, ISO 16000, but both should be fine for Web use. The camera has two extended ISO settings, Hi1 (ISO 25600) and Hi2 (51200); details are visible, but noticeably smudged, at ISO 25600, but fine detail is blurred at ISO 51200. The Sony Alpha 77 II keeps JPG noise under 1.5 percent through ISO 12800, but a side-by-side comparison of JPG output shows that the 7D Mark II shows more detail at ISO 12800 when both cameras are shot at default noise reduction settings, and the 7D Mark II has a noticeable edge in detail at ISO 6400.

If your preference is for more detail, you can lower or disable in-camera noise reduction via the menu. Or you can shoot Raw; doing so does limit the amount of shots you can capture in a burst, but it saves images without noise reduction and with more data retained, which makes it possible to adjust exposure and other characteristics using Raw conversion software like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Raw images show strong detail through ISO 25600, although there's a lot of grain when you push the camera that far. Detail is rough at ISO 51200, but much better than the JPG image. When shooting in Raw you do see the advantages of the 7D Mark II over the Alpha 77 II in terms of image quality; the 7D Mark II shows more detail at ISO 16000 than the Alpha 77 II does at ISO 12800. I've included pixel-level crops of both JPG and Raw images in the accompany slideshow.

The original 7D was a favorite of videographers due to its video recording option, and for those adventurous enough to install third-party firmware, the improvements that the Magic Lantern suite brought to the camera. The 7D Mark II records QuickTime or MP4 video at up to 1080p60 quality. You can only record footage at 1080p60 using an IPB compression scheme, which is more heavily compressed than the ALL-I recording options that are available at 1080p30, 1080p24, and 720p60. If you plan on shooting video with the intention of editing it into a finished project, ALL-I is the way to go. The camera features both a microphone input port and a headphone jack, so you can connect a pro-grade microphone and monitor audio while recording. Video quality is excellent, with sharp details, but as with most large-sensor cameras, rolling shutter can be an issue when panning quickly or capturing fast-moving action.

The 7D's Dual Pixel AF system comes into play when recording video. Video autofocus is very quick, as on-sensor phase detection handles all of the work. There's no need to hand off to a contrast system, which racks back and forth to lock focus, so the in-focus/out-of-focus/in-focus effect that you get with most SLRs isn't an issue. The 7D can also be set for Servo AF, which constantly adjusts focus as the scene changes, when recording video at almost every setting. You can configure just how quickly the focus system reacts to changes in the scene; at slower speeds it racks slowly from out-of-focus to in-focus, emulating the slow racks that you're used to seeing in cinematic productions. Servo AF is disabled when shooting at 1080p60, so you'll have to press the rear AF-ON button to activate the autofocus system.

There are several autofocus modes available when recording video, including face detection with tracking, a wide focus area, and an adjustable flexible spot. You'll need to use the rear joystick to move the flexible spot around if you opt for that setting; there's no touch-screen input as there is with the 70D. But the 7D's Live View autofocus system behaves better when recording video in low light, which we found to be an issue when testing the 70D.

The 7D Mark II has a number of interface ports. It uses USB 3.0 for data and it has a mini HDMI output to send uncompressed video footage to a field recorder. There's also a remote control port and a PC sync socket to connect to studio strobes. It supports two memory cards, one CompactFlash and one SD, SDHC, or SDXC.

Owners of the original 7D have been patiently waiting for an updated camera. The 7D Mark II proves that the wait was worth it. It's got the best autofocus system that I've seen in an APS-C body, and its image quality holds up against the stiff competition in this category. When you add in smooth autofocus when recording video or using Live View for stills and access to Canon's extensive lens system, you've got a camera that is worthy of being called our Editors' Choice. That's not to discount the competition; the Sony Alpha 77 II, which also earned Editors' Choice honors, delivers much of the performance of the new 7D, shoots at up to 12fps, and is considerably less expensive. It's still a solid option for photogrpahers who have an investment in Sony or Minolta lenses, and anyone who prefers an EVF. And, if extreme burst shooting isn't a requirement, don't count out the Pentax K-3, another good choice that can be found regularly for less than its original asking price.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

4.5

Editors' Choice

See It

$1,499.00 at Dell

MSRP $1,799.00

Pros

• 10fps continuous shooting.
• 65-point cross-type autofocus system.
• Great control layout.
• Huge JPG shooting buffer.
• Lots of detail at high ISO.
• Access to Canon lens system.
• 1/8,000-second shutter.
• CF and SD card slots.
• Integrated GPS.
• 1080p60 video.

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Cons

• Pricey.
• Lacks built-in Wi-Fi.
• Fixed rear LCD.
• Servo AF unavailable when shooting at 1080p60.

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The Bottom Line

The Canon EOS 7D Mark II shoots at 10fps, offers pro-level video recording, and is built like a tank. It's our Editors' Choice for high-end APS-C D-SLRs.